Journey From Japan to the Frontlines of Global Peacebuilding (2024)

Yosuke Nagai is on amission tochallengeapathy and inequality inconflict zones

Photo Credit: Andreas Hechenberger

Yosuke Nagai at the 2024 Asia Peace Innovators Forum

Globalization has expanded our channels of information on an unprecedented scale. However, exposure and connectivity sometimes seem to have created the opposite effect when one notices how the Global North has detached from the Global South. In a world where privilege manifests into forgetfulness, Yosuke Nagai and his organization, Accept International, remind us that change comes from one’s conviction to equality and compassion.

As a global non-governmental organization that aims to free the world from armed conflicts, Accept International’s peacebuilding efforts have brought Yosuke to the frontlines of violent extremist groups in Somalia, Yemen, Kenya, and Indonesia. In addition to his mitigation efforts on the ground, Yosuke is also a member of the UN Youth Advisory Board, where he frequents UN offices in New York and Geneva.

Before peacebuilding took him around the world, Yosuke was a college student when Japan experienced the strongest earthquake in its recorded history. Yosuke recalls the overwhelming international response to Japan, but as the recovery work began in Tohoku, famine struck on the other side of the globe in Somalia. In the summer of 2011, East Africa was ravaged by the worst drought in decades. An estimated 260,000 people died of hunger in Somalia, 17 times the death toll in Japan.

Yet, when Yosuke asked his professors and other NGO leaders in Japan, he was disappointed to discover their passivity towards the Somalian famine. “I wanted to do something in Somalia… most people just prayed for Japan”, said Yosuke, “but how about Somalia? [We are] the same human beings”. Outraged by inequality and the apathy of his superiors, Yosuke took the first step of his humanitarian journey by establishing his own NGO in September 2011.

Despite Yosuke’s best efforts, the situation in Somalia was still deemed too dangerous for him to travel there. Instead, Yosuke spent two years in neighboring Kenya, where his organization aided tens of thousands of Somalian refugees. In 2013, with the help of the African Union, Yosuke finally arrived in Somalia. The situation was no less dire, as security concerns led to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) withdrawing from the country. Shocked by MSF’s withdrawal, Yosuke realized the pressing need to address the hard questions around armed conflicts and terrorism.

The destabilizing presence of Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Somalia poses significant hurdles to peace, to which Yosuke admitted that “there is no answer”. Yet, hard problems still need to be tackled, and since then, Yosuke has explicitly focused on difficult conflict zones. Yosuke continued, “We should work for such challenging places in the world… we expanded our work from Kenya and Somalia to other challenging places”. The NGO adopted a new name, Accept International, and became the organization it is today.

Working from the ground up, Accept International directly engages with young people on the frontlines of terrorism and conflict to deradicalize and reintegrate them into society. “General humanitarian work, like providing food, care, and protection for refugees and IDPs (internally displaced people), is somehow easy, but when we talk about resolution, rehabilitation of disengaged combatants, or even negotiations with armed groups and terrorist organizations to get their voluntary defection… it’s super tough… high costs, high risks, less money,” explained Yosuke, and spoke of these challenges as motivations for Accept International to do the things other people could not or would not do.

Yosuke is also an advisor to the United Nations. Although the UN has allowed Yosuke to share his frontline peacebuilding approach, he feels the UN is limited to being a platform rather than a genuine agent of change. He recalled the repeated cycles of one-hour discussions, short speeches, and dinner meetings in Geneva and New York. “I understand the importance of doing something global… but at the same time, as a practitioner, I feel more and more we need to do more on the ground because they (the UN) can’t”.

The lack of imagination from the UN was also apparent to Yosuke when Europeans and Americans were shocked by his career path, specifically as an Asian working in a complex field in challenging conditions. Yet, for Yosuke, frontline peace work can and should come from all countries and cultures. “I can easily join the UN, but I don’t want to… I think about my responsibilities, my position, and who I am as a frontline practitioner on this topic. That’s my motivation,” said Yosuke.

After more than a decade’s experience on the frontline and deep insight into the inner workings of the UN, Yosuke felt the importance and potential of an Asian perspective in peacebuilding. As a part-time lecturer at Kyoto University, Yosuke has been encouraging the Japanese youth to take up a more active role in global affairs, and his advice is, “Don’t think about what you can do, just think about what you should do.” While this advice holds for youth worldwide, Yosuke thinks that Asian youth have a unique chance to shatter their reserved and quiet image and take the initiative in global peace; generating noise from Asia begins within Asia.

Yosuke Nagai is the founder and CEO of Accept International. Yosuke has been active in implementing deradicalization and reintegration programs for defectors and prisoners of violent extremist groups in Somalia, Yemen, Kenya, and Indonesia since the establishment of Accept International in 2011. He has also conducted various outreach programs and sensitization programs and has served as a member of expert meetings and technical working groups in UN agencies.

Yosuke is a member of the third cohort of the Asia Peace Innovators Forum, whichshapes long-term peace, stability, and regional cooperation in Asia by building a network of mid-career professionals working in different sectors and countries to exchange knowledge, community-driven approaches, and best practices.